Semiclassical and quantum features of the Bianchi I cosmology in the polymer representation

We analyze the Bianchi I cosmology in the presence of a massless scalar field and describe its dynamics via a semiclassical and quantum polymer approach by adopting three different sets of configurational variables: the natural Ashtekar connections, a set of anisotropic volumelike coordinates and the Universe volume plus two anisotropy coordinates (the latter two sets of variables would coincide in the case of an isotropic Universe). In the semiclassical analysis we demonstrate that the big bounce clearly emerges in all the sets of variables. Moreover, when adopting the proper volume variables (i.e. when defining the Universe volume itself on the polymer lattice) we also derive the exact polymer-modified Friedmann equation for the Bianchi I model. This way, the expression of the critical energy density that includes the anisotropic energylike contribution is obtained, demonstrating that in this set of variables the big bounce has a universal nature (i.e. its critical energy density has a maximum value fixed by fundamental constants and the Immirzi parameter). Finally, a proposal is made to recover the equivalence between the dynamics in the Ashtekar set and in the anisotropic volumelike one, showing that this request is satisfied when a polymer parameter depending on the configurational coordinates is considered. Then, we apply the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner reduction of the variational principle and we quantize the system. We study the resulting Schrodinger-like dynamics only in the Ashtekar variables and in the proper volume ones, stressing that the behavior of the Universe wave packet over time singles out common features with the semiclassical trajectories. However, we show that the standard deviation for the Universe volume operator grows with time. This is a signal of the spreading of the Bianchi I wave packet and hence of the importance of the quantum fluctuations in order to properly study the big bounce picture.